![]() ![]() You can also avail of our online reservation service for just £99* at We offer free home delivery across Northern Ireland with full UK & Ireland delivery arranged at your request^. We can provide a personalised video direct to your email, home demonstrations and secure finance completion online. For added convenience at point of enquiry, you can buy your car from the comfort of your own home. All of our used vehicles are prepared to the highest standards in line with manufacturer recommendations, undergo a full valet inside and out, and are supplied with a minimum 12-month warranty and 12 months’ roadside assistance for extra peace of mind. NCAP Overall Rating - Effective February 09Įstablished in 1947, Donnelly Group is synonymous with the motor industry in Northern Ireland with over 1,500 approved used cars and vans available across our range of showrooms. Man Corrosion Perforation Guarantee - Years Manufacturers Paintwork Guarantee - Years Do you really want something French that’s kinder to the environment? Look at the electric Renault Zoe, for starters.Standard manufacturers warranty - Mileage Especially when its rival hybrid hatches are the excellent new Toyota Yaris and the eminently practical Honda Jazz. This hybrid Clio is the sort of car you’ll buy with your sensible hat on – sure, it sips petrol well enough, but it doesn’t really do enough to justify getting it over one of the cheaper petrol-engined versions of the car. We drove the £22,495 Launch Edition version of the car – the most expensive Clio you can buy, but it does come with useful things like keyless entry, the 9.3-inch touchscreen infotainment and a suite of electronic safety widgets. Obviously with fancy tech like this you’re going to pay a premium – official fuel consumption of 64.2mpg is higher than comparable models in the Clio range (we managed around 52mpg over a few hundred miles, with a third of that travelled in electric mode), so that’s maybe a few hundred pounds a year of fuel saved, plus £50 lower VED annually. Line models add £500 on top of the next petrol cars down. This is more the question, isn’t it? The entry-level hybrid is in Iconic spec, £1,500 above the highest-spec diesel you can still buy in the Clio line-up, while the S Edition and R.S. This is the car as device, moving you in only the most literal sense. It makes for a car that feels grown-up, but there’s no real sense of it being fun to drive. It’s a comfortable ride, though, smoothing out the see-saw bumps of urban driving and gliding along the motorway when you’re out of town. The ride is a pleasant surprise – the Clio rides flat, with minimal roll, the presence of upsets in the road mainly communicated through your ears and a slightly force-feedback jolt in the steering wheel. ![]() You’ll learn to ignore it quickly enough, mind. There’s an occasional lag as the car decides which bit it wants to provide the power to the wheels, and while the set-up isn’t as loud as the Toyota system can be, you still get the dissonant experience of the engine revving out of sync with what your foot is doing on the accelerator as it charges the battery up. ![]() You don’t get the roar of a CVT with the Renault’s hybrid system, but the driving experience will take a little getting used to if you’re moving from a purely IC-engined car. There were a few rough clunks and jolts during changes during our time with the car, but those blips aside the whole effort is more pleasant than the CVT number in the Toyota Yaris. The important thing is that the car goes and stops and does plenty of that without the engine turned on. Of course, on the road none of this matters particularly, and with this first drive on UK roads, it’s immediately obvious that Renault’s engineers have done a decent job of ensuring that you don’t know what’s going on underneath the metal. Is it as complicated to drive as it is to explain? It also allowed the project to go ahead, Renault said that none of its more traditional gearboxes would have fitted with all the electronic gubbins in there too. The auto box allows the powertrain to operate in distinct modes, the smaller electric motor powering the gearbox to match speeds during changes. It also harks back to the 1898 Renault Type A built by company founder Louis Renault, which also featured the set-up. The interesting bit is the clutchless four-speed dog box, a feature that adds a whiff of credibility to the same E-Tech badging that’s carried on the team’s F1 cars.
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